


the best revenge

by iimpavid, It_MightBe_Love



Series: the batmom multiverse [1]
Category: DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Bank Robbery, Female Jewish Character, Gen, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Jason Todd Needs A Hug, Jewish Character, Kidnapping, Lazarus Pit, Reunion, batmom, evil grandmother, single parent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-13
Updated: 2018-06-13
Packaged: 2019-05-21 21:58:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14923568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iimpavid/pseuds/iimpavid, https://archiveofourown.org/users/It_MightBe_Love/pseuds/It_MightBe_Love
Summary: In the middle of the night, a dead boy gets up and goes shuffling into the city in his dirt-streaked white bowtie, bespoke suit, and red converse, begging for water and his name.





	the best revenge

**Author's Note:**

> This is another iteration of the "batmom" universe It_MightBe_Love and I have created. We've fallen in love with the myriad of ways in which April Miller manages to acquire and help raise Jason Todd.

_“… if you love me, I will love you._

_Let the birds sing and the lambs play_

_We shall be safe out of harm's way…”_

 

April ends up in an apartment in Portland, Oregon of all places.

It's small, her apartment, with a closet that fits a twin bed and so can be rented as a one-bedroom instead of a studio. But it's ground floor and the landlord took cash and asked zero questions.

She's never done this before. She thinks... she's _almost certain_ she can handle it.

The money grandmama had left for her is helpful, but April doesn't want to use it all up so she budgets everything out carefully in between feeding her son and sometimes herself. She picked _Jason_ out of a name book at the public library. Shaking with anxiety and shushing him while he squalled his complaints at the universe at large into her shoulder. He's small and too many weeks premature which makes it more difficult and at fourteen  _she knows she's too damn young_ to have a baby but he's _hers_. He's all hers and when he quiets down his eyes are bright and understanding and impossibly sweet and innocent and trusting.

She isn't giving him up without a fight. Mama's wishes be damned.

Especially since she doesn't know what else to do. With daddy dead, she was lonely, so lonely, in that big old plantation house. Was it selfish that she kept the pregnancy a secret until she almost couldn't? Maybe. That doesn't stop her running when her mother demands she get rid of it.

She uses her grandmother's name. Katherine Adler, it helps she looks so much like her grandmama that nobody questions it, and anyway. People will do a lot for money that can't be traced.

It's a lot of sleepless night.

Jason's prone to colic and he absolutely hates being rocked. It takes her three months to figure out that pacing back and forth and singing helps, that he likes the sound of the trains. The entire apartment shakes when they come through, every two hours on the dot, and if he's crying when they do he'll settle down. He laughs for the first time because of those stupid trains. She'll sing him _Lavender Blue_ like her grandmama did for her when she was small. She knows he's going to be sharp as a tack, like her. Not like his daddy, but maybe like _her_ daddy-- General Miller was a genius in his own right, right up to the point the liquor got him. Her baby's got the Miller nose she realizes one day and this delights her so much she blows raspberries into his neck and tummy to listen to his shriek with glee and grab at her hair.

She isn't lonely.

Mama hires some private investigation firm.

April’s smart, smarter than pretty much anyone, she knows it too, so it takes them almost two years to find her. Two years of April using assumed names to submit her own research to various intelligence agencies. She has her daddy’s smarts after all and it ain’t like words have ever been a thing she struggled with. It isn’t how she thought she’d end up makin’ a living but she’s gotta make it long enough to be a legal adult before she can come right out. Having a one-and-a-half-year-old at her age complicates matters.

The girl down the hall, Lehzan, has three kids. She’s nice, if a little paranoid. Aluminum foil taped or glued to every available surface, but it works in April’s favor when she has to work shifts at the diner. She has to be seen to be working because you draw less suspicion that way. And, well, she might be absorbing some of Lehzan’s paranoia just by proximity. But then it isn't paranoia if they're really watching you.

She comes home and there are cops all over the apartment complex.

Lehzan is dead and all the children are missing.

Jason is missing.

She doesn’t find him.

* * *

 

First there is soil. Afterbirth of black earth. Stomach acid and the sickening sharp taste of formaldehyde. Moonlight.

In the middle of the night, a dead boy gets up and goes shuffling into the city in his dirt-streaked white bowtie, bespoke suit, and red converse, begging for water and his name.

Before the cops turn up a rabbi takes him in and cleans the bloody beds where his fingernails used to be, pulls splinters of fiberglass out of his knuckles. Gives him a glass of water. Coaxes him to move dumb and trembling limbs to bathe without sinking below the waterline. Rabbi Leherer does not know his name either but speaks low and smiles and calls him "motek" and lets him sit and listen to the prayers and hymns at the evening service.

He understands none of it but the music of the words is warm and safe.

The woman arrives in winter and is too kind to argue with. She has answers about his screaming nightmares, why his earliest memories are a coffin and a woman singing a lullaby about lavender and kings.

The rabbi is a way station on the road from one pit to another.

The grave was kinder.

* * *

 

Jason Todd is not dead. His body works in peak human condition and his rage and fear go hand in hand. He is skilled, ravenous, unhinged. He is the sum of his parts.

It is not living.

He turns up on Rabbi Lehrer’s after he tries to kill the child who replaced him. Not because he regrets it but because he failed and there are few other places he can think of to go. He sits on the steps of the synagogue and waits, picking his fingernails clean (they didn’t grow back until the pit and he can feel every single grain of dust under them with painful acuity; he has to keep them clean) and hums to himself. A repetitive, lilting melody that reminds him, inexplicably, of his mother.

_“…when you are king I shall be queen._

_Who told you so, who told you so?_

_’_ twas _my own heart that told me so…”_

Gotham is never quiet but he can half hear the service inside and it’s nice. It does nothing for the blood on his hands— most of it figurative but the creases of his knuckles and the lines of his palms are stained from this most recent attempt at murder— but it’s nice.

Rabbi Lehrer recalls the boy, from a number of years ago. Turned up on the steps outside then as well, covered in dirt and vomit. Reeking of the graveyard and Other. Amos isn’t unfamiliar with the strangeness of Gotham, and he’s a man of G*d so it isn’t as if he has it within himself to turn away someone seeking asylum. But there’s something different about the boy now. More man than child, judging from the breadth of his shoulders and the lines in his face.

“C’mon boy, my wife is doing up a roast for after service, you help me clean up the temple and you’ll get a hot meal out of it.”

He helps out the rabbi, eats, scrubs at his hands until there's no blood left drying in his knuckles and leaves in the middle of the night after folding the blanket they lent him into a perfect square on the arm of the sofa. 

* * *

 

April does not go home. The one, brief conversation on the phone with her mother torpedoes any possibility of reconciliation. "I don't see what you're so upset about," Eva Mae had drawled, blaze at best, "you can get back t'school and focusin' on your future."

She can't prove it, but she knows in her gut that Lehzan's death and the disappearance of her son, is her mother's doing.

As it happens, Brown University offers her a place in their undergraduate department, she's already leagues beyond her classmates and without Jason-- her mother was, she is loathe to admit, right about this-- there's nothing to slow her down. Nothing to stop the anger and grief from driving her to becoming the best.

It helps, of course, that she has money. But she stops being April Miller the day she turns eighteen and stops speaking to her family. April Adler is a better name anyhow.

Divorced from the Miller fortune, she can and does make a name for herself and she uses that name and those connections to try her damnedest to find her little boy. She doesn't stop looking, which leads her eventually to the private investigation firm and from there, to Gotham.

April enjoys her position at NYU, they're desperate to keep her when she begins the process of inquiring after employment at Gotham University. GU is an Ivy League institution, their department is on par with NYU but it isn't New York but PI's and the cost of living are both cheaper. It isn't the place she made her home, but, looking at the Gotham Gazette the morning of the on-campus interview she sees-- the boy standing beside Bruce Wayne, is without a doubt, her son.

He looks too much like her own father for it to be coincidence.

She doesn't read the article, doesn't know it's an obituary until she gets there. She's on the verge of making inquiries and it's all over the news. The Joker has killed the Wayne heir.

There is nothing worse than losing a child twice.

But April Adler is wealthy and well-connected and exceptionally beautiful. She wields her intelligence like a finely sharpened blade. The Adler Foundation for at Risk Youth is on the cusp of being on Forbes top 50 wealthiest nonprofit organizations.

If nothing else, she figures, throwing herself into work and the organization will keep her from hunting down the madman and killing him her-own-damn-self.

Rabbi Lehrer is a godsend though. He and Rabbi Boehm had been friends as boys, having temple to attend alleviates some of the worst of her grief. Not by a large margin but it is nice to be welcomed someplace. To have some place to pray. To be seen. There are very few people in the circles she travels in, who are Jewish.

Turns out, Gotham was founded by Catholics and it's social elite haven't really deviated from that pattern since.

She was twenty-nine when she came to Gotham, she'll be celebrating her thirty-third birthday this year.

* * *

 

“... You disrespectful hooligan! _Gey strashe di gens_! Do you even realize that model’s gotta nasty habit of jammin’ when you eject the magazine? You’re gonna shoot your damn hand off usin’ secondhand firearms.”

Robberies are supposed to be fun especially when every attendee is wearing diamonds the size of grapes and left their sense of shame at home. Most of the time folks balk when he starts shooting even the brave ones but sometimes, occasionally, there are stupid ones who don't quite know when to quit. His eyeroll is audible even under the hood. Rich people are all the same-- himself included-- stubborn, possessive.

“Lady, who the fuck do you think you are?”

"I'm th'woman you're tryna steal from, you want money. Get a job, can't get one? Call th'Adler Foundation an' I'll get you one. That bracelet was my gran’mama’s."

"That's real sweet of you, but I don't need money. This is just my idea of a Friday night."

If the next moment, when he shoots out the chandelier-- less to cut the lights and more for the distraction-- he neglects to grab the bracelet in question anyway, well, blame it on his impulsive nature.

April'd like to say she's never been robbed before. Losing her son notwithstanding though, she was a pretty, young woman living in New York by herself. She's been mugged a time or three.

What she's heard and experienced in Gotham though, you'd think the social elite never had been. She loses a pretty pair of diamond studs, but when the Hood shoots out the lights, he leaves her grandmother's bracelet.

They all make the papers the next day anyhow. Specifically, April Adler, letting the Red Hood have it for thinking to rob people, when really she was just tired and hungry and-- when Vicki Vale accosts her for a quote about the experience, April rolls her eyes, "Listen sug'-- I'm an Orthodox Jew, I got stuck at a function that night with nothin' kosher t'eat. Some of my students use this word hangry. I feel I typified it pretty spectacularly that night, and honestly, y'all're gonna throw dinner parties with poor security like that, you're askin' t'get held up for your shiny rocks."

Needless to say, April Adler has something of a disparaging nature and a reputation for being unlikable in person, even for all her humanitarian and philanthropic outreach programs.

* * *

In all honesty Hood isn't trying to rob April Adler twice; she's walking home arm in arm with the Penguin and it only stands to reason that this is some sort of particularly subtle and coercive kidnapping. It's easy enough to take out the henchpersons but April Miller's brick-filled bookbag is a force unto itself.

Things Jason never thought he'd experience: a lady beating him with her purse to keep him from beating the shit out of the Penguin.

What the fuck is the world coming to?

April Adler takes her bag to the Red Hood's head with quiet grace then yanks one of her shoes off to threaten him with it. It's one of the metal spiked Louboutins she was gifted the year prior. She and Oswald might not see eye to eye on certain practices, but he's been nothing but gentlemanly to her and he has thrice now ensured that totally unrelated Charity events have her favorite Kosher edibles.

He also brings her quality shoes and books. They're something like friends.

 

Jason has to admit: Adler and the Penguin being friends has many more interesting possibilities. She would by no means be Gotham's first crooked philanthropist. Everyone, from the Salvation Army to the Gotham SPCA have shady deals to keep running. (Except Bruce Wayne. But then Bruce is the exception to an infuriating number of rules.) The quickest way to get answers is to go to the source, get his hands on Adler Foundation files himself and see what's wrong with their books. That'll put a sour look on the Penguin's face and be adequate revenge for the bookbag-induced headache that takes a solid three days to leave.

The drawback, though: the only place with tighter security on their financial records than the Adler Foundation is Wayne Enterprises.

Undercover work is not Jason's strong suit. Patience, waiting, observing? Those are his least favorite aspects of the hunt but are a necessary evil if he's going to get the Adler books.

It's not hard to get a hold of Tim Drake and Jason isn't blessed with anything resembling either tact or courtesy. "Hey, replacement, how's that scar healing up? Make sure you put vitamin E oil on it. You wanna help me out with something real quick?"

Tim does not expect the Red Hood. Not unlike the Spanish Inquisition, some things are impossible to predict and prepare for.

"Hello, Jason. The scar is healing well, thanks for asking. Why are you in my apartment?" It's one of his safehouses. The old Paramount Movie Theater, and he's converted it just for his use, even if he still sleeps at Wayne Manor. The question has him thrown and he pauses to backtrack over it. "I'm sorry, repeat that? Why would I want to help you?...and with what exactly?"

"I'm in your apartment because you live here." He rakes a hand through his hair, the gesture a little frantic. He maybe hasn't slept well but that's not quite new but it is in a way. The _reason_ for not sleeping is new. "I need to get the Adler Foundation's financial records and their home office ain't exactly easy to break into. And, no, I don't trust what they've made public or I wouldn't be lookin' for advice on that undercover stalkin’ people thing you gotta knack for."

Tim blinks, tilts his head, "Why... exactly has the Adler Foundation gotten your interest?" He's thinking about the one time April Adler walked away from Bruce when he was trying to engage her in conversation. She's prickly, that's for sure. "I mean, I'll help, but in return, you have to come to the manor for dinner on a day of my choosing.”

"She's friends with the Penguin. Like, walkin' arm in arm down the street to her house friends. And-- seriously? I gave you a free pancreatectomy why do you wanna have me over for dinner?"

"You gave me a splenectomy--”

“ _Close enough_ \--”

“-- it wasn't free. It nearly killed me, and half of Gotham knows Dr. Adler is friends with the Penguin, she nailed one of his goons with her shoe when they held up the bank of Gotham four years ago." Tim arched an eyebrow and then went in for the kill, "Alfred misses you."

"Bein' dead was easier jesus fuckin' christ," he sighs. "Look, she went from a pretty reasonable person who doesn't want shit to do with our local kingpin bird fetishist to bein' his best friend and her foundation's got ties to every other major financial institution in the city, Wayne Enterprises included. That's one hell of a risk not to be investigating."

"So, you want me to do what? Get you in to take a look? Go in myself? Or do you want me to hack their system? The first might be a little difficult, the second is more doable, if I stay in the wheelchair. The third? I'd probably have to call a favor in to Barbara and that means you'd owe her a favor."

He pulls a face. " _Favors_ ," he says it with the distinct implication that he won't be involving Barbara. Except maybe as a last resort. "Your baby face'll get you in anywhere and honestly the wheelchair just adds to the charm."

Tim rolls his eyes. "You want digital files? I can probably be in and out with a flashdrive in half an hour."

 "Hardcopy. It'll be harder to trace and easier to destroy and you could pull off being an accounting intern or something."

* * *

 

Tim finds the records of April hiring private investigators to track down her kidnapped kid and he's absolutely floored that she even had one, and then, because when he does a job he does it right, he also pulls her personal financials. Which involves all her academic history. It's how he learns that when she was seventeen she changed her name to April Adler, prior to that, she was April Miller.  _That_ necessitates him digging deeper and learning that April Lynette Miller, of James Hawthorne and Eva Mae Miller of _those Millers_ , left home at fourteen, under unusual circumstances and that Eva Mae spent almost two years trying to track her child down and bring her home.

During that time April Adler has a son. Jason Ezra Adler who disappeared June of 1994 at 18 months old, after her neighbor, Lehzan Moreau was killed, presumably during a break-in that resulted in her three children disappearing as well.

Tim finds a lot of it... curious. 

Digging into Adler's other records, so he can track how her search in Portland, Oregon led her to Gotham reveals some very strange things, namely that four years ago her PI told her that he'd traced the adoption records to a couple in Gotham in 1995 to a couple named Sheila Haywood and Joseph Todd.

He prints all of it remotely to the printer back at his safe house. He texts Jason, _'found some interesting stuff, but nothing suspicious_ '. It's a conversation he figures will go over better in person. Other than that, April Adler is clean as a whistle, her holdings and money came from smart investments of an inheritance left to her by  _the_ Katherine Adler. Kat Adler of _Gone With the Wind_ fame.

He prints a side-by-side of Adler and her granddaughter. The resemblance between the black-and-white movie starlet and the linguistics professor is uncanny.

* * *

 

Jason sits in the floor of the safehouse reading and rereading the files Tim sends immediately as they print, scouring the databases he can access to corroborate or contradict them.

Of course, he hits something of a snag.

As soon as Tim's done being the world's least-suspicious accounting intern Jason calls him, leads with the demand, "The adoption records you found, those were legit? With the original, unaltered signatures?"

Tim nods, realizes Jason can't see him and says, "Yes. They're legit. As far as I've been able to find, that's where the trail ends. Jason..." Tim doesn't know how to ask this question, it isn't an easy question to ask, or even to consider but-- "You know what this looks like... don't you?"

"Yes, I know what this fucking looks like!" He throws the records across the living room. All they do is spin and float in the most unsatisfying way and he can't throw his phone because Tim is on speaker, the phone sitting on the table out of reach. The last thing he wants to be right now is alone in the quiet. "It looks exactly like I robbed my own mother and she concussed me with her goddamn purse!"

Tim can hear the papers scattering. His phone has excellent reception. Perks of being the heir to a tech conglomerate, thank you Drake Industries. His jaw clenches, he glances around and says, "Well... that explains a helluva lot about your personality."

Jason buries his face in his hands, groans, "I need to buy her new earrings. Fuck.” Then inspiration strikes. He might be off the hook. “ ...Hey. We can run DNA analysis in the batcave right? How hard would it be to get one of Adler's coffee cups?"

Tim pushes back a little bit, and in a few keystrokes, removes all his search inquires, "She doesn't drink coffee, but she has a rare blood type so she has records on file with -- let me pull it up-" He's back at the computer, "Got it. We can run it at the cave if you want?"

"Yeah, yeah, alright," he says, a little distracted, already getting up to retrieve the photocopies and straighten them. There's nothing resembling a file folder on hand to stick them in so, reluctantly, he folds the thick stack of papers and shoves them into the inside pocket of his jacket where they buldge somewhat awkwardly. "I'll be there in an hour. Great job finding the best way to rope me into your damn dinner."

Tim pulls up a copy of Adler's sequences and then deletes everything from the computer, wipes down anything that might have his fake prints on them, and then leaves. It takes him a little more than an hour, traffic is appalling. He pulls into the cave and he's damn tired, but it's fine, he thinks, because Jason's stupid motorcycle is parked on the landing.

When he hauls himself out of the car he says, "You made good time. You didn't destroy my place in a fit of rage did you?"

"I burned it down, actually, hope you weren't attached to it." He holds out a sealed plastic tube, "Saved you a cheek swab though. Don't do anything unethical like cloning me, alright, the world can't handle more than one Jason Todd."

Tim plucks the tube from his hand, "Smart ass." He dumps his bag on a table, "This should be pretty quick. The cave computers have fast sequencers, you wanna sit down here while I run it? Or hide upstairs and mooch hot chocolate off of Alfred?" He's already jamming a thumbdrive into the computer and pulling up Adler's DNA profile, and then he's pulling the swab free to deposit in the scanner.

"I might as well stick around." He sits with his arms folded across his chest, his left knee jumping while the comparisons run.

And Jason, he reads the analysis a few times, the comparisons of blood type and genetic markers for features he can't list, half of them he can’t pronounce. Numbers and literature are more his forte than genetics. What he does understand from the graphs alone: his DNA matches April Adler's by a solid 50%. His heel stops tapping against the floor. "Can you... print that off for me?"

Tim's just as surprised, but the gravity of the situation stays his snark. He nods, he understands more of it-- but not by a lot. He prints the report out. "I'm not going to ask if you wanna talk about it. But uh... I'm here if you do man." He holds out the paper to Jason. "Are you going to see her?"

"And say what? ‘Hey I made my little brother steal your DNA reports while investigating you for fraud and it turns out I'm your son! I'm not kidnapped or dead, sorry I robbed you’?" He scoffs, grabs the report, folds it messy and small enough to fit into his coat pocket along with the adoption records. "Yeah, that's a great idea. C'mon let's get this family dinner shit over with so I can meet my quota for the year."

Tim frowns, "I mean... it's pretty normal for kids to hunt down their parents though isn't it?" He rolled his eyes, "Alfred says he made your favorite, for the record. I texted him from the Adler Foundation building." He followed Jason upstairs, "It won't be that bad. But you oughta know- Dick's--"

"Little Wing!"

210 pounds of muscle and pungent aftershave launches into him.

"...Dick's here."

"Gee, thanks for the warning." He will go to the grave (again) swearing he did not under any circumstances need or want a hug at that particular moment or any moment before or after, ever. But he pats Dick on the back and doesn't immediately knee him in the balls. “Hey, Dick, how ya doin’, good? Great. You wanna let go? Thanks.”

Dick doesn't in fact wanna let go, but he does. Reluctantly, he might be teary-eyed. He's in touch with his emotions, he isn't ashamed of that.

Jason spends dinner viscerally uncomfortable. It's like they already know he's found his birth mom's identity-- knowing how the grapevine of vigilantism works, they probably do.

* * *

 

He takes the photocopied adoption records and the results of the genetic sequencing home with him, drinks too much coffee and chainsmokes and tries to figure out what to do next. Around 3 a.m. he finds a pen between the couch cushions and writes _Jason Ezra Adler_ out on the back of a corner store receipt until he runs out of space.

It never stops looking less awkward no matter how smooth he gets the lines of the letters.

The next thing is the easiest part of this mess he's made: replacing April’s earrings. He’d get the originals back except for the fact that Marcus dismantles every piece of jewelry that comes his way. It takes a solid three days but, finally, he settles on a pair of diamond studs set in gold from an antiques dealer. They're about seventy years old, from Germany. They look like little flowers.

Jason addresses them to her, initials the back of the card. Then, because he’s somewhere between paranoid and incredibly stupid, he decides to deliver them himself-- if you want something done right you've got to do it yourself.

April comes into her office early from a meeting with some donors. She has a migraine starting behind one eye. Which is why she's damn surprised her door is unlocked and there's a burly kid standing over her desk.

She keeps a few photographs there. She never takes people in her inner offices, so she doesn't mind keeping the personal touches there. The three surviving photographs she had of herself and Jason. Her too young, celebrating her fifteenth birthday shortly after his birth, tiara crooked on her head and a smaller crown on Jason's-- it's her favorite. She steps into the room, maybe foolishly. The pictures are the only thing of value in the room and he's a sight too close to them.

"Can I ask what th'hell you're doin' in my office, and how exactly di’you get in?"

Jason almost drops the picture he’s holding— April with a baby in a Captain America onesie, April with _him_ — catches himself in time to set it back on her desk, gently adjusting it back into the angle he’d found it in.

“It’s not hard to pick the lock,” he’s somewhere between sheepish and surprised she doesn’t realize that fact.

April Adler looks like a movie star the way people used to mean it when there was a romance to Hollywood and magic on the silver screen. There's an undeniable presence to her. She's classy in her bespoke skirt suit wearing her hair in a chignon. She’s tiny this close despite the heels and absurdly he wonders if having him so early stunted her growth or if he caught some recessive gene that made him grow so tall.

He adds, “I’m not here to steal anythin’ just.” The picture’s not quite straight. He taps one corner of it again to adjust it. “I just had somethin’ to drop off— you weren’t supposed to be here yet. I’m sorry, if I startled you.”

It’s a long way from the apology he owes her bit it’s a start. “But since you’re here,” he offers her the jewelry box that had come with the earrings, small lacquered cherry wood, carved with stars. “Here. I’ll, uh, see myself out,” he says and steps past her.

Her eyes narrow. There's something familiar about him that she can't put her finger on, but she doesn't move, takes the jewelry box and flicks it open -- "I wasn't scared," she drawls, eying the earrings in the jewelry box.

He was messing with the photos on her desk, and there are diamond earrings in the jewelry box and-- "Stop." There is only a slight quiver in her voice.

It can't be, because he was supposed to be dead, but then-- this _is_ Gotham.

His arms break out in gooseflesh and the easiest thing to do is to keep walking. He turns back, enough to see her. It’s mostly selfish. He can see some of the similarities between them, the cheekbones, the nose. He wonders if she sings because he remembers lullabies. “Somethin' wrong?”

Her jaw clenches a little, "You... _know_ what this looks like?" She holds the box up, "Don't you? I'm assumin' you're aware I ain't stupid..." She swallows, "Why'd you replace the earrings?”

Of course, she has to ask a question that gets right to the heart of it instead of the dozens of others that could have come to mind. He swallows, too, just as nervous and it’s hard to be the first one to come out and say it.

“It’s kind of a long story,” and in a stroke of genius he digs the records, the test results out of his coat pocket and holds them out to her. The papers rustle faintly. His hand is shaking. “I’ve got sticky fingers, obviously, and, uh, I found these and I kinda figured, in light of all that, I should return what I took. Or at least get some like 'em."

It's a weird conversation to be having in her offices at the Foundation. She always expected this to happen-- who the hell knows where? But not here.

She takes the paperwork and even a cursory glance tells her all she needs to know. "Take off the sunglasses?" And clears her throat, "I got time, you wanna explain?"

He does take them off. Rakes a hand through his hair before he looks at his mother, caught somewhere between shy, eager, and ashamed. _His mother_. “That’s a lot of explainin’. I guess the short answer is I spend my free time doin' a lotta illegal shit but I regrew a few morals about doin' that illegal shit to my family. I don't know how to explain the rest-- just that I'm not dead. I mean. I was but... Not anymore."

He looks just like her father did when he was young. Except her daddy'd been blond. Jason's father though-- he'd had black hair. He's got blue eyes too and dammit. She is not going to cry. He's entirely grown up and she missed all of it.

"Well, s'long as you grew some morals, I s'pose you can be forgiven." She clears her throat again, "You want tea? I got tea, also have vodka. The good stuff, none a that garbage the rich folk here think is good vodka."

"Vodka," he says it without hesitation and maybe he should have gone with tea but she offered. "Thanks."

Clearly, he wasn't dead. _Clearly_. "You look just like my father did. Same size t'boot."

"Well that's good to know 'cause I definitely didn't get it from you."

April fetches the vodka from inside the globe nestled in a corner along with two small green glass tumblers. She has to laugh-- "I'm small compared t'everyone else, but I take that after my gran’mama."

He huffs a short laugh through his nose and picks up another one of the pictures on her desk because he thinks it might be easier than looking at her. This one's another birthday, probably April's, and they're both in dime store plastic crowns. There are two tiny green candles on the cake, homemade by the look of the frosting job. This must have been taken shortly before he was. "Are there more? Pictures, I mean."

When she comes back around toward the desk to pour them both a few fingers of the vodka she goes quiet, mouth turned down, "When you were-- when you went missin', my apartment was uh...turned over? Not a lotta photos survived it. I think I got maybe four or five more at home. When I first brought y'home from the hospital. Lord, you were an ugly baby. Squashed face and bright red f'weeks, and you didn't stop screaming I think for the first month I had you. Not unless I sang or th'trains were comin' ‘round."

He finishes what she pours in one gulp, considers for a second, then grabs the bottle from her desk and pours himself another instead of asking. “I wouldn’t call it missing; it looks like a kidnapping. How the hell’d they adopt me out without your consent? It ain’t like my parents woulda been approved in the first place— did they just _sell me_?”

It’s hard to believe that his parents, the Todds, could have afforded such a thing but it’s the closest explanation he can come up with. If that isn’t enraging, nothing is. April Adler’s clearly an upstanding sort of person with her head screwed on right and he ended up with the Todds because of... _what_? There’s not a single good reason he can find for it.

“Yeah, it figures I was an asshole baby. I never grew out of it. I still like trains, too-- I, uh, lived on the street? For a while? And I’d sleep near the tracks ‘cause it was soothing. Probably didn't do my hearing any favors but that doesn't matter now.”

April is still holding her glass in her hands, leaning against her desk and watching him. He's so grown up and she's so angry that she missed it.

"Dunno if those files a yours indicate anything else, but uh- your grandmother. My mother, she ain't exactly--" she sniffs and glances down, "I was barely fifteen when I had you. Not even really. They-- my family, wanted me to get rid of you or give you up. Said the scandal'd be bad for us all." She shook her head, "I was so damn alone. I thought, t'hell if it's selfish. I wanted you. I was pretty good at stayin' disappeared but-- well. The Miller name holds a lotta power and money. An' I could never prove without a shadow of a doubt that it was my mother who hired th'men who took you. She thought with you gone, I'd come home." She swallowed what was in the tumbler rapidly. "Money buys a lotta things boychick, and one of those things is paperwork looks legal, and I was still a minor, legally speakin'- "

That startles a laugh out of her, his good humor. "Nah, if my grandmama were alive she'd say you inherited th'Adler need t'be the loudest most attention grabbin' thing in th'room." Her chin trembles, "I'm just... I'm so sorry I didn't find you sooner."

“Hey,” he reaches for her on impulse, puts his hand on her arm and steps closer but stops short of hugging her. “Hey, look. It ain’t your fault, alright? It’s just— it’s shitty is what it is. It’s wrong and dirty and damned _machiavellian_ , alright. But that doesn’t make it your fault that your ma’s basically a child-snatching Disney villain. Although I’ve gotta few choice words for her if you wanna give me her number. What’s her name anyway? I’ll look her up.”

"I'd pay good money to see that happen."

It surprises him that the last thing to come to mind is violence— not because he has problems hurting women who’ve earned it. He wants to know why. Why was her reputation so damn important that he had to end up like this? The hooking and petty crime and dying young, that would have been enough, but he _couldn’t even stay dead_ — and it was all so easy to avoid.

“I gotta tell ya I’m relieved I’m not actually related to the Todds, you don’t even know.”

She clears her throat, she isn't a crier. Hasn't been since her father died. It doesn't stop her eyes from burning though, or her wanting to wrap her arms around him. He's too big to hold now anyway.

"Instead, you went an' ended up Bruce Wayne's kid. Even if it was brief-like," her mouth curls down, "Eva Mae Miller ain't much better'an the Todds s'far as I'm concerned and you've probably met her."

“Yeah, I don’t know about that but I’ll take your word for it. Can’t say the name’s familiar… I’ll look her up, see how grandma’s holdin’ up these days.” He says this with a mischievous sort of glee that usually bodes ill. He catches sight of another of her pictures and it takes him a long moment to realize that the candles she’s guiding his hand to light are on a menorah shaped like a stegosaurus. Absurdly, he thinks, _That explains the circumcision._

April snorted, "One a these days I'm sure I'll run into her myself. Boy that'll be a real treat," her eyebrows rise with her sarcasm, but she can't quite contain her amusement at the unholy glee in Jason's voice.

He laughs to himself when an idea strikes him— “Since this is kind of a big deal and all, you wanna take a picture?” He hesitates then adds, “Y’know, to commemorate it? It’s _not_ a big deal or anything I just thought you might like it since you’ve gotta lot of pictures around.”

"I... yeah. C'mere. Six inch heels don't do a whole lot when you're surrounded by giants."

“I could always pick you up,” he tells her, pulling out his phone, “But then we’d need someone else to hold the camera.”

"You pick me up and I'll pinch you. Don't think I won't--" she threatens him, though probably it's dramatically ruined by the enormous smile on her face.

He leans into her to hug her— pictures are always a great excuse— and rests his cheek against the top of her head. It’s a little surreal. His mother exists, isn’t a junkie, and is barely bigger than Damian.

“Smile for vengeance,” he tells her and takes the picture. “You should make this your Hanukkah card this year— do people do Hanukkah cards?— and send it to mommy dearest. ”

She _is_ getting revenge, that's the best thing. She is at last getting revenge on her mother, because she got her baby back even if he is grown up. She wraps an arm around his waist and squeezes him tight. "I send out personalized holiday cards to friends. This is definitely gonna be on it, might even send it to my mother just on account a how much it'll freak her out."

“We could make it really disturbing and send her a kitschy, suburban “it’s a boy” announcements, see how she likes that,” he suggests. The name Eva Mae Miller rings a bell but by no means a significant one; that makes it much, much easier to hate her. “I’ll send this to you. Give me your number? I don’t wanna lose track of you. I’m not leavin’ or whatever unless you got stuff to do? But I don’t wanna forget.”

She plucks a card off her desk, and on the back scribbles her personal cell phone number, and then under it, her address with the door code. "There, y'oughta come by for dinner. I'd uh... like to get to know th'troublemaker my kid turned out to be. See if we're anything alike?" She paused, then added, "Also, maybe someplace I ain't likely to get arrested for chewin' you out over your poor taste in handguns."

“Hey, I replaced that Ruger, alright,” he complains absently while he commits her card to memory then sticks it in his coat pocket. “I got time now, if you ain’t got anywhere to be? I mean, lunch ain’t dinner but y’know,” he shrugs, “there’s no time like the present?”

"Uh-hunh. I'll just bet you did," but she smirks and glances at her desk, then nods decisively, "Yeah. Lunch, there's a place I go to on quieter days. Lemme let my assistant know I'll be unreachable for th'rest of th'afternoon."

She tapped a message out on her phone and fetched up her jacket, before pausing, "You ever had kosher?”

“Nope, but I’ll eat pretty much anything.”

He texts Tim before he can stop himself, sends him the picture he took with April captioned, _technically this is what mission failure looks like_.

 


End file.
